The Banality of Digital Reputation: A Visual Ethnography of Young People, Reputation, and Social Media

This article relies on a visual ethnography with young people between 13 and 20 years old. Young people were asked to make visual collages of fictional social media accounts, which are used in this article to analyse the signification of “good” and “bad” reputation in digital youth culture. It explores how reputation is performed visually and aesthetically in digital youth culture. The aim is to contribute to the critical study of digital reputation, it formulates an ethical critique on how the signification of digital reputation has formed alongside values and beliefs that support the growth of platform capitalism, rather than assigning a reputational value and rank responsibly. I conclude how the signification of digital reputation is not only conformist and essentialist but also meaningless. The banality of reputation argues that, in the context of popular social media, there is no real or substantial information made available to distinguish between a “good” or a “bad” reputation, except for stylized banality, a stylistic focus on lifestyle and commodities. The point is that reputation should not be banal and meaningless. Many important political and institutional decisions in a democracy rely on the evaluation of reputation and critical assessment of the information upon which such evaluations are made. Although platform capitalism has made digital reputation meaningless, it is in fact an essential skill to critically orient oneself in digital societies.

And Then There Was Zoom: A Catholic Theological Examination on the Development of Digital Youth Ministry

Although some youth programs have found significant success in expanding their ministerial outreach through the use of digital technology, a significant question remains: can spiritual communion among youth remain flourishing in isolation or outside the ‘brick and mortar’ walls of the church? The following paper is a practical theological analysis focused upon defining digital youth ministry and the theological underpinnings that provide a framework for its development. Sketched out through the lens of American Catholicism, this paper will especially make use of the sacramental and Trinitarian language of ‘communion’ and accompaniment in framing its exploration digital youth ministry and how it can keep young people engaged through periods of isolation caused by crises like that of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction

In the age of digital media, to understand ‘digital youth’ becomes a task of growing importance for academics and educators. This current issue of Beijing International Review of Education (bire) brings together contributions from a group of international scholars to discuss the usage of mobile phones, computers, iPads and the Internet among young people in their daily life, which suggests possible directions to improve education for the younger generation. Based on a review of relevant literature and collected papers of the special issue, this introduction shares some of our responses to the questions referring to the digital changes of young people’s identities, cultures, lifestyles, learning patterns, ways of socialisation and public engagement. It argues that future education innovation must pay attention to a spatiotemporal and sociocultural complexity of young people’s living, learning and literacy in the digital age, which needs a new philosophy of education for the digital youth.